UNSOLVED VEGAS MYSTERIES: The Most Unlikely Suicide in Sin City History

Posted on: March 25, 2025, 10:28h. 

Last updated on: March 25, 2025, 01:05h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.
  • The body of Raymond Spilsbury was found in the Colorado River near Hoover Dam in February 1946
  • Spilsbury’s ankles were shackled with his own belt and his pockets filled with stones
  • Despite this, authorities ruled out foul play and determined that Spilsbury took his own life

The storied history of the Boulder Dam Hotel includes hosting heads of state and celebrities, and one of the most enduring mysteries in Nevada history.

Raymond Spilsbury owned the Boulder Dam Hotel, shown in a postcard dated 1933, its inaugural year. The hotel is located 30 miles southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, in Boulder City by Hoover Dam. (Image: UNLV Special Collections, inset: ancestors.familysearch.org)

When Raymond Spilsbury, the hotel’s owner, drowned in the nearby Colorado River, a coroner’s inquest ruled it a suicide. But most historians who’ve delved into the incident have a severe problem with this finding.

According to Dennis McBride’s 1993 book, “Midnight on Arizona Street: The Secret Life of the Boulder Dam Hotel,” Spilsbury’s widow, Vona, told the author: “Foul play was uppermost in our minds.”

And she has a solid case.

Tangled Webb

The Boulder Dam Hotel today. (Image: Wikipedia)

Paul Webb, a contractor known for building lavish Beverly Hills homes in the 1920s, had sought to do the same in Boulder City, starting with the Boulder Dam Hotel. But he lacked the finances. So he approached Spilsbury, with whom he worked for the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation during World War I.

They agreed to form a hotel corporation with another colleague from the copper mines, Austin Clark.

In 1943, the effects of living and working high in the Peruvian Andes for three decades had taken its toll on Spilsbury. He suffered a minor stroke and developed angina and leg pain.

The following year, he moved to his Boulder City Hotel, with Vona and their son, to retire. Spilsbury had intended to help his brother, Chauncey, who managed the property, revitalize it during his recovery.

Fishy Story

The Salt Lake Tribune covers Spilsbury’s death on Feb. 28, 1945. (Image: Newspapers.com)

On Jan. 19, 1945, Spilsbury, 56, drove out to Emery’s Landing, a small fishing resort on Lake Mead about 20 miles south of Boulder City. His supposed intention was to go fishing with Murl Emery, according to the entrepreneur who founded the fishing resort with money he made by ferrying Hoover Dam workers to the construction site.

But Spilsbury didn’t arrive at Emery’s resort until 1:30 p.m. or 2 p.m., unusually late for a fishing trip. And, according to Emery at least, the two never met up. Instead, Emery’s father informed him that Emery wouldn’t be back until that evening. So Spilsbury decided to walk a trail beside the river to kill some time.

At 3 a.m. the next day, according to Emery, he noticed Spilsbury’s blue Pontiac parked in his parking lot and began searching for him. His wife discovered Spilsbury’s hat and coat on the river trail, placed underneath a rock to keep them from blowing away.

The contents of the coat’s pockets included a wallet containing a $12,352.40 check made out to Spilsbury, along with $1,100 in traveler’s checks and $53 in cash.

If foul play was involved, as Vona Spilsbury suspected, robbery wasn’t the motive.

As searchers combed the area, Vona allegedly told McBride that Emery “tried to blackmail me into a sum of money if he found Ray’s body.” If true, this suggests that he may have already known its location before its discovery.

Not Everybody Loved Raymond

Five weeks later, on February 26, three fishermen from LA spotted a human arm jutting out of some bushes growing out from the side of the river, about eight miles downriver from Emery’s Landing.

When Spilsbury’s body was pulled from the river — by sheriff’s officers and Emery, who had rushed to the site — its ankles were shackled together with Spilsbury’s own belt, and its pockets were filled with heavy stones.

On March 1, an inquest was held in Boulder City, at which several of Spilsbury’s friends testified to a three-member coroner’s jury.

The jury found that Spilsbury had “come to death by his own hand.” In other words, they believed that he tied his own ankles with his own belt, to prevent himself from swimming to safety, then stuffed his pockets with stones so he would sink to the bottom, then jumped in.

Not Suspicious Enough For You?

In 1936, Webb had partnered — apparently without Spilsbury’s knowledge — with a local tourism business called Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours. Webb and its owner, Glover Ruckstell, signed a 20-year agreement with the National Park Service to build, own, and operate all tourism businesses in Lake Mead.

That company also ended up owning the Boulder Dam Hotel and Emery’s boating operation.

The company went belly up in 1942, when Lake Mead didn’t prove to be the recreational goldmine its investors hoped it would be by then. All, including Spilsbury and Emery, suffered huge losses.

When Webb and Spilsbury dissolved their partnership, Spilsbury was given majority ownership of the Boulder Dam Hotel.

One of the coroner’s jury’s three members was Murl Emery — the man who lost a fortune investing with Spilsbury, the man whom Spilsbury supposedly intended to go fishing with after 2 p.m., and the man who seemed to know where to find Spilsbury’s shackled body before it was discovered.

Emery — who died in March 1981 at his home in Boulder City — was never charged with a crime involving Spilsbury’s death because, to this day, Nevada authorities don’t consider his death to have resulted from a crime.